Farewell, Vanguard

On history

History is the desperate record of the quickly-extinguished.

Don't look

Don't look
if you don't want to act.

Never

Never trust anyone who carries around a pretend get-out-of-jail-free card.

To desire (Miller)

Anyone who says he is burning to do something other than he is doing or to be somewhere else than he is is lying to himself. To desire is not merely to wish. To desire is to become that which one essentially is.

Henry Miller, The Colossus of Maroussi

My life

Finally, I know what I will do with my life.
And it goes on as before…

Crazy (Miller)

There is no salvation in becoming adapted to a world which is crazy.

Henry Miller, The Colossus of Maroussi

What we understand

How often do we conceal what we understand
even from ourselves?

But we can (Miller)

Nature is ever ready to repair the gaps caused by death, but nature cannot supply the intelligence, the will, the imagination to conquer the forces of death.

Henry Miller, The Colossus of Maroussi

What you do well

Trying to improve what you do well is laudable,
but trying to do everything well is a waste of effort.

Enslaved (Miller)

A billion men seeking peace cannot be enslaved. We have enslaved ourselves, by our own petty, circumscribed view of life.

Henry Miller, The Colossus of Maroussi

Bard (Cavafy)

Far from the world, poetic magic makes him drunk;
     all the world, for him, is lovely verse.

C. P. Cavafy, from "Bard"

Reshuffle

Too often, living reshuffles character,
weakening one's hand.

When you're right with yourself (Miller)

To be silent the whole day long, see no newspaper, hear no radio, listen to no gossip, be thoroughly and completely lazy, thoroughly and completely indifferent to the fate of the world is the finest medicine a man can give himself. The book-learning gradually dribbles away; problems melt and dissolve; ties are gently severed; thinking, when you deign to indulge in it, becomes very primitive; the body becomes a new and wonderful instrument; you look at plants or stones or fish with different eyes; you wonder what people are struggling to accomplish by their frenzied activities; you know there is a war on but you haven't the faintest idea what it's about or why people should enjoy killing one another...When you're right with yourself it doesn't matter what flag is flying over your head or who owns what or whether you speak Engish or Monongahela. The absence of newspapers, the absence of news about what men are doing in different parts of the world to make life more livable or unlivable is the greatest single boon. If we could just eliminate newspapers a great advance would be made, I am sure of it. Newspapers engender lies, hatred, greed, envy, suspicion, fear, malice. We don't need the truth as it is dished up to us in the daily papers. We need peace and solitude and idleness.

Henry Miller, The Colossus of Maroussi

New poems

+10

The end (Doty)

Who can become lost in a narrative,
if all he can think of is the end?

Mark Doty, from "Lament-Heaven"

Occasions (Doty)

Don't let anybody tell you

death's the price exacted
for the ability to love;

couldn't we live forever
without running out of occasions?

Mark Doty, from "The Wings"

On abstraction

Abstraction, like any purification,
trades complexity for clarity.

Current Models

Open Road Review (based in India, with a poetry editor in New Zealand) has accepted my poem "Current Models" for publication in their next issue. I'm very excited to continue to find international markets!

10th Annual Independence Day Poem

               Screed

keep your self-deprecating angst
your exhibitionistic schtick
your easy anger, your sleazy pandering

America has always been about seeing
how far one can go with a desire
(usually called “dream”) and a gun

we feel without training
it is better to be a terror
than a nuisance

hobidy-boobies
trying to scare one another
and scaring themselves

and now for our next entertainment
a long-popular farce recently out of fashion—
CIVIL WAR!

the Party of God vs the Party of Man
vs the Party of Wealth vs the Party of Hope
vs the Party of Science vs the Party of Sense

how foolish, the one who consents
to engage with a foolish society
on its own terms!

every day I celebrate the liberty
to decline
by doing so

we are untruly represented
in government and in religion
and in the opinion of those who know us

democracy makes
a better seedbed
than guardian

Older people

The reason the young don't take us seriously is that they think our time has passed, that we've missed it. Eventually, they get us to agree with them.

Push it (Robbins)

If you take any activity, any art, any discipline, any skill, take it and push it as far as it will go, push it beyond where it has ever been before, push it to the wildest edge of edges, then you force it into the realm of magic. And it doesn't matter what it is that you select, because when it has been pushed far enough it contains everything else.

Tom Robbins, Even Cowgirls Get The Blues

New poems

+8

Leap (Robbins)

All a person can do in this life is to gather about him his integrity, his imagination and his individuality—and with these ever with him, out front and in sharp focus, leap into the dance of experience.

Tom Robbins, Even Cowgirls Get The Blues